May, 2013

According to fight business uber reporter Dave Meltzer, the UFC is considering making a super fight between middleweight champion Anderson Silva and light heavyweight champion Jon Jones happen this fall in Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, Texas. Of course, Silva would have to beat Chris Weidman this July and come out relatively unscathed for the super fight to remain viable and Jones himself would have to of healed from his grisly toe injury.

After a recent visit to the doctor, it looks like Jones could be healthy in time for a super fight. More on that later in the post. First, the scuttlebutt.

“There is an idea floating around to try and put on the biggest show in company history at Cowboys Stadium in Dallas this fall,” Meltzer reports in his Wrestling Observer newsletter.

“The idea would be to have Silva vs. Jon Jones and Velasquez vs. Dos Santos at the stadium, in October, at the same time as the state fair of Texas, perhaps on 10/12 or 10/19. That much is known to be at least something talked about. With Madison Square Garden seeming more and more unlikely for November, this show could be billed as UFC 20th anniversary show, with the idea of trying to repeat the success of UFC 100.”

After getting backed into the cage by a series of knees around the four minute mark of the first round, Baroni was dropped by a Suzuki right hand that appeared to put him down for the count. A few follow up punches wrote this notion home and the referee was forced to step in. Unfortunately, said ref didn’t appear to notice that Baroni’s foot was trying to break free from the rest of his leg and provided little comfort for “The New York Bad Ass,” who now falls to 15-17 in his professional MMA career. At this point in his career, Baroni should consider challenging James “Why Me?” Irvin for the right to be called the most cursed man in MMA.

Of course, Baroni wasn’t the only former UFC star to suffer a tough loss this morning…

If following loosely MMA-related minor celebrities on Twitter is your thing, there’s a chance that you have already seen Jenna Jameson‘s latest tirade against Tito Ortiz last night. That’s right, the couple known for their crazy, attention-seeking behavior decided to air their dirty laundry on Twitter, and it was just as outrageous and pathetic as you’d expect it to be.

Of course I’m not joking about that last statement. Tito Ortiz said that Jenna Jameson’s erratic behavior distracted him before the fights he lost at the end of his career; presumably because even he has finally realized how pathetic of an excuse “I totally had a cracked skull, you guys” is.

This may be more of a precautionary measure than anything else — who knows if Jenna Jameson will actually come forward with a story about Tito Ortiz almost killing her — but it’s right about now that I think we need to revisit a defunct CagePotato Ban from the days when Ortiz was a free agent claiming to be “very close” to signing with a new promotion every other day:

Leites’s title challenge against Silva at UFC 97 was both uncompetitive and dull as hell; there was a lot of butt-flopping from Leites, and a lot of weird crap from a clearly disinterested Silva. Leites followed up the unanimous decision loss with a split-decision defeat against Alessio Sakara, and the UFC gave him his walking papers.

How do you ask a grown man to talk about a time you saw him cry? It can’t be easy, and maybe it’s not even polite. Surely an interviewer can think of other questions to ask someone — especially a fighter.

Unfortunately, in the day or so before speaking with Kron Gracie, that was the main thing I could think to ask, and to ask first. To be clear, I saw Kron cry when he was still a child, and then only from a distance.

Maybe I was mistaken and he wasn’t even truly crying.

Yeah, maybe that’s how you ask a man to talk about it — tepidly and with plenty of qualification. Probably not, but that’s how I broached the subject with the man.

It was the summer of 2000. Rickson Gracie, the champion of his family, was hosting an international Jiu Jitsu invitational. There were tournaments for every experience and ability level, as well as famous champions competing in super matches as well as milling around the arena as a part of the crowd.

And then there was little Kron Gracie. He had to have been just eleven or twelve.

Kron presumably could have chosen to enjoy the whole event as a child — that is, running around with family and friends, playing. Instead, he was in a gi and on the mats.

Kron’s older sisters were pretty and did fun demonstrations with their father. Kron’s older brother, Rockson, walked around the tournament with his head shaved, tattooed and an air of seriousness, the obvious heir apparent to Rickson Gracie’s fighting legacy.

Whatever pressures his siblings surely felt, Kron was the one on the mats that day, competing.

Kron competed that day and, when I saw him, he had just lost.

It couldn’t have been easy, and Rickson’s youngest child was visibly upset. Losing is never fun but when everyone is watching you because your dad is the best fighter in fighting’s first family, it has to be miserable. Rickson, walked over to Kron, put his arms around him and consoled his young son.

“I know what I want to do to get the results that I want to get: Trust in myself and get it done. Takedown, ground and pound, roll up our sleeves and get dirty and go to work. I’m gonna try to get 50 takedowns this fight. 50…Let’s not confuse this whole situation. I’m not going to go in there and stand in front of him and try to bang it out and hope to God I don’t get hit with that big right hand. I’m going to be smart. He’s gonna want to knock me out. It’s not gonna happen. He’s not knocking me out.” — Rashad Evans

This would be like A-Rod guaranteeing 150 home-runs this season. The difference is, home-runs are exciting. Evans’s vow to shoot, shoot, and keep shooting rather than mess around with a slugfest may be wise from a strategic standpoint, but it suggests the kind of gameplan that might not be so much fun to see in action.

Our prediction: Rashad tries for 50 takedowns, converts about three or four of them, and spends at least two-thirds of the fight struggling with Hendo against the fence. Apologies in advance, Winnipeg.

Fresh off a 12-round drubbing of Robert Guerrero earlier in the month, undefeated and outspoken WBC and The Ring welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather has just booked his second fight in a year for the first time in six. Years that is. “Money” will meet WBC and The Ring *light middleweight* champion Saul “El Conelo” Alvarez, a 42-0 Mexican-born boxer who holds 30 knockouts and notable victories over Shane Mosley, Austin Trout, and Jose Cotto to his credit.

(No, Tim, we do not know where they keep the rest of the honey. Photo via Sherdog.)

You guys, this might come as a Scanners.gif to you, but Tim Sylvia — best known around these parts as Fatty Boom-Boom — failed to make weight for his scheduled contest with Tony Johnson at ONE FC ‘Rise to Power’ tomorrow. Tipping the scales at a hefty-yet-slimmed down 271 pounds (perhaps The Maine-Iac 90 Day Weight Loss Challenge works after all!), Sylvia missed the heavyweight limit by 6 pounds earlier today. While some of you may accuse of us going after the low hanging fruit here, let us not forget that this is the same Tim Sylvia who just weeks ago was informing us of his desires to finish his career in the UFC. This is not a great start.

To be fair, Sylvia wasn’t the most egregious offender at today’s weigh-ins, not by a long shot. That dishonor would be bestowed upon Ryan “The Lion” Diaz, the 13-13 Strikeforce and KOTC veteran who had not competed in nearly three years before agreeing to face Yusup Saadulaev in a bantamweight contest. Weighing in at 144.8 pounds, Diaz surpassed the limit by nearly ten pounds. Somewhere, Anthony Johnson is eating his second straight double fudge ice cream sundae and smiling for completely unrelated reasons.

Sylvia and Diaz, along with Andrew Leone and Lowen Tynanes, will all face penalties for missing weight in the form of purse deductions, although just how much they will lose has yet to be disclosed by ONE FC officials. Thankfully, the scheduled title fights in Honorio Banario vs. Koji Oishi (featherweight) and Bibiano Fernandes vs. Koetsu Okazaki (bantamweight) will actually make it to fruition, as all four fighters successfully made weight.

The entire ONE FC ‘Rise to Power’ fight card can be purchased for just $9.99 through ONE FC’s official website. Featuring the likes of Phil Baroni, Kamal Shalorus, Masakatsu Ueda, and Eduard Folayang, the card is set to kick off tomorrow morning starting at 6:30 a.m. EST.

The full weigh-in results and a video preview of ONE FC ‘Rise to Power’ are after the jump.